Life Here & There 
No Comments Caveat Emptor
For those who are not familiar with the phrase, “caveat emptor” means “let the buyer beware.” If you live in the Philippines, you already know what this means in day to day life. I would guess most people in the world outside of the USA and a few other places are well aware of the meaning of the phrase in real life.
What do I mean by the “meaning of the phrase in real life”? Quite simply, you expect others to try and rip you off or con you out of your money by inflating the price or selling you something worthless but talking up what it can do. This happens daily in the life of a Filipino so you are on guard against it. You know when someone is telling you a lie and can call them on it. That’s just life in most of the world.
For example, my hubby had a horrible return trip from the Philippines once where it ended up taking him 70 some hours to get back home and a lot of wasted time and money. He was exhausted with all of the delays in Manila and opted to get a taxi and a hotel room. Anyone who lives in the Philippines knows what happened next. Because he isn’t that fluent with Tagalog yet or the methods of conducting business, he paid the “white man tax” or they inflated the prices because they know he’d pay without any concern. He didn’t exercise the “caveat emptor” in Manila for language and physical exhaustion reasons.
When you take those skills to other countries, it only helps you in business transactions and purchases. You watch what the merchant is doing and double check to make certain they are telling the truth. This is a crucial skill nearly all Filipinos have and should never get rid of. There is a big reason why that I have observed.
In the USA, you have your variety of political opinions floating around but I won’t dive into them. However, there is one mindset of the ‘government must protect the consumers from the businesses’. There is always a place for that in the enforcement of contractual obligations and stopping blatant unfair to all actions (such as automatically signing someone up for credit cards if they don’t opt out). But, like most things in the USA, it is overdone to the point where it hurts the population more than it helps.
Here is how: The amount of regulations on businesses drive up costs and directly hurt the pocket book of the consumer. That’s the easy one to identify. The less obvious is the creation of a false sense of security. A portion of the citizens gets used to the idea that the government will intercede and save them from the ‘big bad business’. Quite simply, that segment of the population gets too lazy on their personal affairs and blindly trusts the government to do it for them.
What happens when the government is incapable or uninterested of enforcing the mountains of regulations? What happens when the government uses that ignorance against the people trusting it and in turn rips off its citizens?
So mga Filipinos, never forget “caveat emptor” against not only merchants but the government too.
